Baroness’s John Baizley at his solo SXSW show earlier this year (photo by Josh Sisk)

I first saw Baroness in late 2003, at a show at the old Talking Head Club on Davis Street. From seeing that early show, as well as listening to their demo, it was clear that this Savannah-based band were destined to be a big deal. Over the years, I’ve followed their rise to the heights of the metal scene (and, in the interest of full disclosure, also met them and booked a show or two for them along the way). Like everyone else, I was horrified to hear that their tour bus had crashed in the UK last year, leaving 3/4ths of the band severely injured.

While guitarist Pete Adams received only minor injuries, John Baizley, vocalist and guitarist, suffered extreme damage to his left arm and left leg, requiring complex surgeries and months of physical therapy. Drummer Allen Blickle and bassist Matt Maggioni both fractured vertebrae, and have since left the band. The accident happened in August, at the beginning of the tour for their then-new album Yellow & Green. After a nine-month hiatus, the band is going back out on the road, with some changes, and is playing Baltimore on Saturday. I spent a few minutes catching up with John Baizley on the phone:

CP: It’s cool that you are coming back to Baltimore right at the beginning of the tour, it’s been awhile off the road – how are you feeling about touring again?

JB: The Baltimore show will be our second show back. We’re really excited about doing it again, because we haven’t been on tour in almost a year now. It’s not been fun.

CP: What’s preparing for this return to the road like?

JB: It’s good, it’s work. We’re finally working again, and that’s a super good thing. After we got in our wreck last year, it’s like ‘Okay, now you can’t do anything for awhile’. At this point we’re all healthy enough to be rehearsing as much as we can, we have a new rhythm section basically, so we have to learn everything, kind of start from square one again, figure out exactly where we are physically and musically, get back on the road and start doing it again.

CP: Sebastian Thomson (of Trans Am) is the new drummer, how is that working out?

JB: It’s awesome; he’s a kick-ass drummer. I’ve been a huge Trans Am fan for years, so it’s awesome to have the opportunity to play with somebody that’s made music that has influenced you and of which you’re a fan. It’s totally kick-ass. Part of what we do in Baroness is spend a lot of time considering the chemistry of the members. He gets it and we all get along, it’s great. It literally couldn’t be a better situation.

CP: He doesn’t live in Philly (where the band is based), though, does he?

JB: He and our bass player live in Brooklyn, but we can have practices and do all the things we need to do, like learn and get better at music.

CP: This is going to be the first time the Yellow & Green material is going to be played by the band in the states, right?

JB: Yeah, ever. I’ve done some solo tracks, but quite literally, these will be the first live performances of the full band playing them in the states… and, really, we did a couple of shows in Europe with them, but not even enough that we got comfortable with it and I think at the time we were playing them, most people didn’t know the songs yet either. It’ll be cool to play them to an audience that knows the songs.

CP: Now that everyone has had a year for the album to soak in.

JB: Yeah, that could be a good thing or a bad thing. I’m hoping it’s a good thing. It’s good when there is some comprehension happening, and people can anticipate the songs or get excited about our setlist, have a good time singing along, hopefully. That remains to be seen – this will be as big a surprise for me as it will be for everyone else at the show.

CP: Are the setlists going to mostly focus on the newer material, or…?

JB: We always play a good cross section of our back catalog and I intend on keeping it that way. We won’t eschew the old songs in favor of purely new songs. We’ll always dip back and play the good songs off the old records. It’s fun to do.

CP: I saw you play a solo set in Austin for SXSW, you played some new material – are you already working on a new Baroness record?

JB: Honestly, I don’t know. It’s been a lot of energy to get this first tour together. So much so, in fact, to consider anything else has been a distraction. So we put all our energy into this, in developing a rapport with the new guys, teaching them the songs, getting comfortable with it and hopefully working towards not just being comfortable with the material, but being better than we were.

CP: How long has the new group been practicing? How long are you going out?

JB: About a month and a half -  not terribly long. It’s a three-week tour, couple weeks off, then another month on, then we’ll take another weeks off, then a couple things after that.

CP: How are Allen (Blickle, the band’s founding drummer) and the other guys?

JB: Everybody’s doing well, we’re all pretty much past the intense physical therapy side of things, kinda moving forward and getting on with our lives.

CP: It was pleasantly surprising to see how fit you seemed in Austin, and how well you played.

JB: That was actually a very difficult set to play, I was in quite a lot of pain, but you’ve got to deal with it.

CP: I’m sure everyone has asked you this, but what’s your reaction to the recent news that Norman Markus (the bus driver during the 2012 crash) has refused to return to the UK to face criminal charges?

JB: I don’t even know what to say about that, you know? That is what it is. We weren’t anticipating it, we were totally fucking surprised by it, I don’t think any one of us knows what’s going to go on with that. Suffice it to say, I am not pleased by that fact whatsoever. It’s making a complicated situation infinitely more complicated.

CP: Does the band have to go back to the UK for the trial?

JB: No, because we didn’t file charges. This is a criminal case that the UK has filed against him, and it’s not a big enough case to do extradition or anything like that, so he said ‘I’m not gonna come to the UK’ and we’re waiting to hear back what’s going to happen.

CP: One positive thing that came from this terrible situation is the large amount of support that’s come from the music community.

JB: It’s super powerful. There’s a lot of people out there I have to thank as nicely as I can because collectively this was a very big shot to us, physically, mentally, financially -  in every way. We’re still, nine months later, trying to make heads and tails of it, and everybody’s got their own experience with it, medical bills, psychological effects, medications and doctors visits, and continued chronic pain. It’s not pleasant, but we’re gonna get through it, and everybody’s gonna be fine at the end.

CP: One last thing – your show is during Maryland Death Fest, I know I’ve seen you there before, are you stopping in this year?

JB: If we can figure a way to get in, we’re definitely coming. Look, INFEST is playing – I’m not gonna miss that.

Baroness performs this Saturday, May 25th with Inter Arma at Rams Head Live in Baltimore.

City Paper: I owe you a great debt of gratitude. When I inherited a banjo about ten years ago, I learned most everything from you.

Pete Seeger: I should have brought down the two books I want to give to Peabody. The small book is my best seller, I wrote it over the course of 14 years and gradually improved it and it’s called How to Play the Five String Banjo.

CP: I know it well. So, how did this Peabody award come about?

PS: I haven’t the faintest idea. They spend much of their time teaching how to read music expertly whereas I purposely stayed away from reading music. I like to be an ear musician, and in school, I had to take a music class but I told the teacher I would really prefer to learn the song from ear rather than from paper. I did put two pages in my banjo instruction book, at the very end, “How to Read Music Slightly.”

CP: I did hear you talking in a concert, from the late ’50s I think, where you talk about different kinds of music borrowing from each other and you say that classical music has stolen enough from folk traditions that we ought to return the favor every now and then. Has classical music been an influence on you?

PS: I’m not unacquainted with it. And actually I’m going to mention tonight  that I put new words to one of the most famous two-part melodies that was ever put down on paper. It’s the opening of the “Seventh Symphony” of Beethoven. The “Fifth” and the “Ninth” are very well known [he hums them]. But the “Seventh” is what they call the Nature Symphony and it is, I think, the most extraordinary two-part harmony ever invented. At four o’clock in the morning about ten years ago I was scheduled to sing at a big demonstration, with about 5,000 people in Bryant Park and we were going to sing in support of community gardens and an idea occurred to me for words to be sung to this melody. So in a magic marker, using my elbow as a fulcrum I made a music staff on a piece of legal paper and I wrote out one of these two parts, the high part, a very simple melody [he sings melody] “We’ll work together, though we work different.” Then on another piece of paper, I wrote out the low part [he hums it]. “We’ll work together even though we work differently.”

CP: And so 5,00 people sang along?

PS: No, no not 5,000. I sent a message up to the emcee in charge and said “are there any women who can read music at sight? Pete Seeger needs help.” I got three altos and three sopranos and we rehearsed it for five minutes and when I got up to the microphone I sang a couple songs to get things warmed up. I invited the three altos to my left and the sopranos to the right and we sang it and they had a very good, loud speaker-system and they sent Beethoven’s “Seventh Symphony” out across the 6th Avenue traffic, hundreds of cars every ten seconds and they all heard Beethoven as they drove down. Well, it was beautiful. It was so interesting that I’ve done it several times since. I announce it just before the intermission so during the intermission I have 15 or 20 minutes to teach it to a group and then we sing it in the second half. And I’m glad to say my words aren’t bad. “We’ll work together, though we work differently/ when we consider all of the dangers/ visions of children asking us to save them/ building our gardens through all the world.” Those are my complete words. And if you know that the high part ends on a high C and the low part ends on a low C–they end on the same note like many Slavic songs do, but an octave apart. Beethoven had probably heard Slavic songs and it was an interesting idea, so he made this end with the high part high and the low part low. An astonishing piece of music. What an extraordinary composer.

CP: One of the things I’ve always admired in the recordings of your concerts is the way you tend to teach the songs to the audience, instead of just performing them. That’s the thing that’s so great about folk music is not having this big divide between the audience and the performer. But as you got more well-known, was it harder to keep that alive?

PS: I gradually developed it and got better at it. When I was 8 years old, my mother gave me a ukulele and I fell into fretted instruments. My mother was a very good violinist and she gave miniature fiddles to my older brothers–but they rebelled and she sadly put the little fiddles away. When I came along five years later, my father said “Oh let Peter find his own way.” She left musical instruments all around the house. A piano and an organ and an auto-harp [here he mimics the sound of the instrument] and a marimba [mimics it] and a penny whistle and several other things. By the age of five, I knew that G and C had the same relation to each other as A and D and then I learned they had names. It was a tonic and a dominant, and then I found out that the dominant had a dominant of its own so when I was playing in G and came to an A chord, I called it a “double dominant” and when I came to an E chord I called it a “triple dominant” and I’d gather the kids around me and go “plunk plunk” and play the popular song. Then somebody told me that I could go around the circle of chords 12 times and then I’d be back at the same chord. Did you knew the circle of fifths absolutely threw Pythagoras for a loop? Pythagoras, when he figured out the famous Pythagorean theorem, God is in his heaven, all is right with the world. But then he tried the circle of fifths and he came out slightly flat. This cannot be! But a circle of fifths does not turn out right unless all the fifths are slightly sharp. And the piano tuner knows this and listens for the throbs, the vibrations. Then he makes the fifth slightly sharp and then it’s throb throb throb.

CP: What do you think the state of folk music is now in the world?

PS: It all depends on your definition of folk music. Because in one sense, I’d say the most popular folk instruments of the 21st century are the electric guitar, the electric bass, and the drums, traps. If you got those three, 99 percent of the people will understand what you are doing.

CP: That’s funny, because 50 years ago people were furious at Dylan for going electric. But now you’re saying those instruments are folk instruments.

PS: Of course, now he just shouts. I can’t understand what he’s singing. Too bad. But he’s actually out there just to say “I am what I am. This is me. If you like it you can like it. If you don’t like it, it doesn’t make a damn to me.” He wrote his best songs when he was young. As did I.

CP: With politics, you’ve been outspoken and engaged over the years. What are issues you’re concerned with now?

PS: It’s hard to say which is the most important. The world population–we’ve got to tell the economists and people with money, they’re simply bringing the end of the world quicker. You may be making more money, but if you tell people “if you don’t grow you die.” it just means the sooner we die. And then you have the people who want to understand. My father used to argue with scientists and said “Do you realize you are the most dangerous religious belief in the world?” and the scientists would answer “No, I don’t have a religious belief.” “Oh no,” my father would say. “You think that an infinite increase in empirical information is a good thing. Can you prove it?” [The scientists replied] “Oh no, it must be obvious.” My father would say “Oh no, it’s not obvious at all. If it’s infinite it means someday it will take a device no bigger than a pistol to shoot off an atom bomb. Is that a good thing? If we don’t put a stop to invention sooner or later, it’s the end of the of the world.” They would stagger off saying “You have no right to ask such questions.” My father would shout after them “Face it, it’s a religious belief.” But then he would turn to me with an ironic smile and say “You know, Peter, if I’m right then perhaps the committee who told Galileo to shut up was correct.”

But I think if the human race is still here in a hundred years, it will be the arts that keep us going, the visual arts, the musical arts, the cooking arts, the humor arts, even the sports arts.

According to Hibbert, he encountered Lewis after the incident. “I didn’t hear much of what he said, but I thought I heard ‘because I love your music’,” he said jokingly of the apparent encounter and the teen’s motive.

Throughout the evening, in which Hibbert shared anecdotes with the audience about his catalog and career, the longtime frontman complained of continuing pain in his head, also stating repeatedly that the performance could be the last of his tour, as he needs to go home to Jamaica for additional medical attention to his “brain and head.” Toots and the Maytals’ current acoustic tour is slated for nine more stops on the East Coast.

“Tonight may be my last show because of my head,” Hibberts said, causing a minor uproar among the audience. “I mean of this tour,” he quickly added.

“I will always be touring,” he said with a smile.

Usually, a song featuring Nicki Minaj is a mixed blessing: she might help you score a hit, but she may also overshadow you with her over-the-top personality. “Somebody Else,” fortunately, doesn’t suffer from that issue – she doesn’t show up until two and a half minutes into the track, and her verse in a relatively subdued style that fits the brooding track. Polow Da Don, who also produced Mario’s 2007 hit “Crying Out For Me,” fills the new single with a unique blend of booming drums, soulful samples and eerie backmasked textures; Minaj aside, it’s not quite like anything else on R&B radio right now, but it also feels of the moment enough that it could work. In any event, it’s sure to stir up more buzz than Mario’s first attempt to launch the album in 2011, with the sleepy “The Walls” featuring Fabolous.

With less than three weeks until the event’s June 8 and 9  dates, many fans reacted with outrage, taking to the festival’s Facebook page to express their anger and disappointment. Moonrise’s lineup—heavy on popular DJs and EDM acts—promised to draw fans from both near and far. Organizers had hoped to avoid problems they encountered with Starscape, an annual all-night event which was ultimately moved from Fort Armistead Park and re-billed as Moonrise after experiencing a rash of problems, including overcrowding and numerous drug overdoses.

Moonrise appeared on track to overcome Starscape’s reputation as a hazard-ridden free-for-all and included acts geared towards mainstream audiences, including a headlining set by Snoop Dogg and a lower-billed set by Wu-Tang Clan’s GZA in which he was slated to perform his seminal Liquid Swords album in its entirety.

According to the statement released by promoters, fans can refund ticket purchases from Ticketfly or affiliated outlets. The statement also mentions the possibility of “alternative events” in the area that would feature artists from the original Moonrise lineup.

A Yamaha concert grand stretched nearly the length of the central room in the four-room, T-shaped club. Wearing an unbuttoned, black, epaulet shirt over a white shirt, the short, slender pianist in the wavy salt-and-pepper hair sat down and played the kind of show tunes, jazz standards, classical pieces, and original compositions that he practices on when he’s by himself, as he was this evening.

On a tune like Irving Berlin’s “How Deep Is the Ocean,” Corea applied a succession of treatments to the theme—swing, bop, stride, avant-garde—as if testing how the melody and changes might be altered in each setting. On “Some Day My Prince Will Come,” Corea played a ballad-tempo intro, then sped up into a jaunty improvisation, the melody always hovering nearby. He pulled out the sheet music for Alexander Scriabin’s Opus 11, Part 1, No. 4, played the piece as written, improvised on it for a while and then returned to the theme. He finished the evening by playing five of his own compositions from his 1984 album, Children’s Songs.

The evening’s highlight, however, was a back-to-back pair of Thelonious Monk numbers, “Trinkle, Tinkle” and “Blue Monk.” In each case he briefly stated Monk’s original theme with the composer’s unexpected rhythm accents and chord extensions. When he began to improvise, Corea used those same tools to create brand new variations. It was a revelatory example of how Corea can borrow someone else’s style and create his own results.

The Chris Toll Memorial Writing Prize is intended to honor “one poet each year whose work indicates the belief that poetry is the best of all callings, who carries poetry through life like a grim, hard, and happy duty, who knows, as Chris did, the finest expanse we might measure is for the love behind the word.”

Submissions for an unpublished chapbook open on June 1. The winning chapbook will be published by Publishing Genius and and the author will receive a cash prize.

We almost blue ourselves when we got word that E.M.P. Collective would be hosting a celebration of what may be the greatest show ever to be cancelled (and luckily revived), Arrested Development. Nolan Cartwright has created a banana stand for the occasion (10 cents gets you nuts!) and there will be a marathon of the show playing in the “back room.”

We’re not sure if your degree in 18th-century agrarian business or the rest of your scholarly pursuits will help you win the trivia contest, but the chicken dance-off, costume contest, and some Hot Cops are sure to make this an event not to miss. After all, “this ain’t no tight-ass country club, ya freak bitch!”

So come as your favorite character and prepare yourself for the May 26th unleashing of the Netflix revival, featuring 15-episodes of undoubtedly self-referential humor and incest jokes. We hear it’s been designed to be watched repeatedly, which is good news considering a feature film might be more than a year away.

Despite what your cool friends will tell you, there is nothing inherently wrong with EDM and dubstep.

When done well, EDM and dubstep afford the same animal-brain rewards that fuel supposedly more “sophisticated” dance music. After Baltimore club legend Blaqstarr’s DJ set at the Broom Factory on Saturday night however, a case could be made that mainstream dance wields a toxic influence on daring taste, impeccable production, and empathetic readings of a crowd – you know, the things that make DJs good – and the stuff that Blaqstarr excelled at in the mid-2000s when he effectively ran Baltimore’s club scene.

To spell it out, all of the critiques of what EDM hath wrought — pre-planned sets that aren’t sensitive to the crowd, leaning on dubstep drops and Afrojack moombah gulps like a crutch — were on display Saturday night. There is no way to explain why Blaqstarr, a game-changing club producer whose influence is still reverberating through the next generation of club kids, was, well, spinning like he was at the Bahama Breeze at Towson Town Center entertaining frat jerks and cougars.

It would be nice to blame garbage Los Angeles DJ culture which took Blaq away a few years ago, but that doesn’t work, either. Consider this 2009 video of Blaqstarr in Los Angeles, building up a crowd with a mix of top 40 and club music and then shooting the show into a weird tangent with Smashing Pumpkins’ “Zero.” It’s mind-blowing and inspired and it isn’t in-the-pocket Baltimore club and that’s just fine because it works.

Around 2 a.m., the Broom Factory dance floor promptly cleared out after Murder Mark’s pretty good DJ set and Blaq, while soundchecking it seemed, played some butt-rock dance track featuring horribly mixed guitars. Then, nothing came out of the speakers while he set-up. So yes, there were a good 20 minutes where a dance party had absolutely no music playing. That one’s on the show’s organizers and not Blaq, but it certainly didn’t help the mood. Thankfully, a dude in the entrance to the Broom Factory played Notorious B.I.G.’s “Dead Wrong” from his ear-splittingly loud phone. He was honestly, the best DJ of the night.

Blaqstarr’s set was a perfunctory mix of EDM and dubstep remixes that you could hear anywhere on any given night, with just the hint of manic club music. About halfway through, Blaq mixed in “Tote It” and teased “Get My Gun,” but never went full-stop with either, before long, retreating back to sub-par dubstep wubs. He also played Bauuer’s “Harlem Shake” for some reason, and a vocalist who said her name 20 times, but I don’t remember because I don’t care, encouraged everyone to “Make a Harlem Shake video” and then shouted-out micro-video service, Vine. We were also told that Blaqstarr’s on Twitter. It was one of those shows.

The final half-hour wandered into “old school” with stuff like Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s “La Di Da Di” and Afrika Bambaataa’s “Planet Rock.” And though “Follow Me” by Aly-Us was a delight, and the show picked up a little steam with a quick flurry of Blaq’s chaotic scratching and whut-whut-whut-whut samples, it remained a messy and disinterested set, all the more frustrating because of those moments where something better would sneak in for a minute or two. Not to mention, Blaq wasn’t playing to the crowd, who only perked up when he played his own tracks. There were never more than a dozen people moving at once. When one of the Broom Factory’s employees walked in and promptly turned on a light at 4 a.m., ending the party,  it seemed more like a mercy killing than a boner-killing party ender.

Others in attendance informed me that the set was also shockingly similar to the one he played at the Broom Factory just two weeks ago. If that’s the case, then Blaq has even less of an excuse. He ostensibly knew the room, right? Consider this hate-fest of a blog post a public service announcement: Blaqstarr and other big deal DJs playing to their core fans in their hometown, please, please, please get out of this lowest common denominator, crowd-pleasing rut. This is not why people pay 10 bucks to see you. What works in Los Angeles won’t fly in your hometown. We know you better than this.

 

In the Gateway building, I was immediately attracted to more of Mariam Cooper’s paintings. “Yolk #2″ was another gorgeous bedroom scene. I can’t put my finger on what I love about these so much- they have a voyeuristic quality and there’s a weird disconnect between recognizing the image of a bed but feeling a kind of restless unease. The skewed perspective seems to invite the viewer into the canvas but isn’t exactly welcoming. I also loved “Big Green”, which features these faint boxes on a white background. The whole composition is encircled in a sickly green stripe like a frame encompassing multiple blank canvasses.

In the Black Box space, Holden Brown, Jessica Childress, Travis Levasseur, and Kat Schneider collaborated on “Wish You Were Here” (left), a multi-room installation laid out almost like IKEA model rooms. This was hands-down the most ambitious project I saw this year. Viewers walk through a warren of chambers; starting with a travel agency office, then an armchair against a flatscreen-cum-window. There’s a bottle of Windex discretely placed on a shelf. Its the little. It’s absurd details like the Windex that make “Wish You Were Here” so successful. Most of the gestures here aren’t doing or saying anything new (there’s a room of plastic plants in front of a projection of a CGI forest) but do it so very well. I especially liked the projection of the CGI snow-covered mountain range next to a blasting air conditioner. The least obvious (and most unnerving) piece is a dog kennel with a flesh-toned blanket on the floor. On close inspection, there’s a faint image of a woman’s face printed on the blanket.

Down at the Main Building, I was totally blown away by DeAndre Britton’s assemblages. It’s hard to describe his work, so I’m glad I took lots of pictures. Some pieces exist somewhere between painting and furniture; collapsing the hierarchy of interior decorating into glorious ruin.

I was so struck by how many amazing painters MICA churns out. I think painting can be a daunting medium; it’s so subjective and leaves so much of the artist’s hand visible to critique. MICA reliably instills both the technical proficiency and (most importantly) confidence in young painters to produce impressive work. I was totally awestruck by Emma Fineman’s larger-than-life portraits of ambiguous figures in heavy makeup. Painterly-paintings of painted people is such a good idea it’s crazy. I could’ve spent hours staring at these. Move over Jenny Saville. Seriously.

Another painter I really liked was June Culp. She has to be the most prolific MICA student in the history of the school. Her work was all over campus and it was all so different. I couldn’t pick a favorite, so I chose her bathtub sculpture and painting because it reminded me of George Bush’s bathtub painting but is so much better.

I was super happy to see these paintings by Nicole Dyer. I had seen her work before at Current Gallery’s Odd Logic but was totally overwhelmed by how crowded the show was. Her pieces work much better here with some breathing room. I love her palette, expressiveness, and ability to imply narrative while breaking so many rules of representation. “Please Come In” spills off the canvas and onto the floor with surprisingly un-gimmicky success. I loved all of these.

Upstairs, Flannery Silvia and Chloe Maratta filled a gallery with collaborative objects, readymades and sketches. I wish I could have spent more time with this work; it was surprisingly opaque conceptually for how inviting and casual its presentation seemed. I’m planning to re-visit this over the weekend!

If you’ve been to New Orleans, you probably know that the city’s basic image as a jazz dominated town–while earned and bolstered by historical importance–is far from its most intriguing musical aspect. For as representative as brass bands, traditional jazz, and accordion-rife zydeco are of the city’s music scene, New Orleans is also fertile ground for experimentation. In this spirit, Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes deftly incorporate an array of seemingly incompatible influence; ragged gypsy punk, traditional Americana, swaggering funk, and classic composition follow one another with aplomb in a typical Johnny Sketch set.

Frontman Marc Paradis operates on stage with an affable sense of humor, mixing off-the-cuff jokes involving crowd members and offsetting his pronounced stage personality with otherwise completely unexpected virtuosity on the electric cello. Paradis’ cello playing colors the band’s occasional forays into territory marked by a precarious balance between Eastern European influence and ska-reggae upstrokes.

With the well timed delivery of a veteran entertainer, Paradis’ between songs banter almost always involves audience interaction and good-natured ribbing. When an obviously intoxicated man in a business suit wandered towards the stage halfway through the Dirty Notes’ set and proceeded to jam his iPhone as close to band members’ personal space as possible, Paradis appeared a bull presented with a waving red scarf.

Akin to the moment between a heckler brazenly announcing themselves and the response of a sharp stand-up comedian, a few seconds lagged before the impressively bearded Paradis put the man in his place. After several moments of withstanding indignity, Paradis snatched the man’s still-recording phone and waved it around before adding—in perfect timing and harmony with the song’s original chorus– “I’ve got your motherfucking phone!” to rapturous applause.

Towards the end of their set, Paradis and the rest of the Dirty Notes welcomed Trevor Brooks and Sam Mulé of Honey Island Swamp Band to the stage to sit in on keyboard and lead guitar, respectively. On the strength of the Dirty Notes horn section (Omar Ramirez on trumpet and Brad Walker on saxophone) and the spot-on slide playing of Mulé, the mixed-company lineup did the Rolling Stones’ “Rocks Off” sweet justice.

When it came time for Honey Island Swamp Band’s folksy upbeat rock, the set faltered slightly out of the gate before righting itself with undeniably solid playing. Mulé’s lead guitar, in particular, often serves to take otherwise unremarkable straight-ahead country rock in interesting and dynamic directions.

The evening’s peak would come on a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody” that featured Paradis and Walker. Honey Island would also welcome local guitarist and vocalist Cris Jacobs to the stage for energetic covers of traditional number “Going Down The Road Feeling Bad,” Robert Johnson’s “I’m a Steady Rollin’ Man,” and 1960’s pop hit “Good Lovin’.” Concluding their set with the title track from their forthcoming release Sugar Cane, Honey Island Swamp Band revealed a move towards a more heartfelt and genuine tone than some of their backyard-party-in-the-Bayou material. Surely, their more lighthearted numbers have an appropriate time and place. In close comparison on Thursday, however, the band’s new material outshone the past as they closed out the evening.

The first piece I saw, immediately next to the check-in tent outside the Fox Building was Miriam Cooper’s “Yolk #1″ (pictured left). This painting is gorgeous. I love the tension between its graphic and painterly qualities, its asymmetrical balance and somewhat creepy tone.

Inside the Fox Building, Annie Rochell’s “Look/Look Away” (pictured left) plays with the cliche of a painting’s eyes following a viewer in a clever way; two images, painted at 45 degree angles from another, show two views of the same boy from different perspectives. It’s weirdly captivating and I found myself pacing back and forth “watching” the painting “move”. It’s oil on canvas for the .GIF generation.

In the adjacent gallery, Justine Kablack serves Lisa Dillin-esque realness (or unrealness?) with a drop-ceiling light sculpture, flooring/astro turf piece, and painting of a sunset through venetian blinds. I’m hoping the similarities to Dillin’s locally well-publicized recent work are deliberate in some kind of meta-narrative of artificiality miming artificiality. (pictured right)

I was really happy to see some amazing sculptural work from the Ceramics Department, which back in my day as a MICA undergrad didn’t get a lot of action beyond the pottery wheel. Olivia Di Benigo’s architecturally-inspired pieces are gorgeous. I love work that has a minimalist aesthetic but subtly shows the artist’s hand in its craftsmanship. Di Benigo totally hits the nail on the head. These are beautiful and so evocative while still remaining the most “quiet” work in the gallery (pictured left).

Downstairs, Emilee Wooten’s figurative sculptures of corpulent women are flawlessly executed and so weirdly creepy. I found it really hard to make eye contact with them and then even harder to break their strangely confrontational gazes. I left the gallery feeling almost embarrassed and that’s an emotion I so rarely feel that I think this work will stick with me for a while. (pictured below)

On the second floor, printmaker Rei Lem’s “Construction” dominates the gallery with its fluorescent palette, large scale and chaotic surface. I really loved her work. So much neon artwork that borrows commercial visual language feels like it’s whisking low-brow culture off to the ivory tower to be sarcastically judged. Lem, on the other hand, seems to be stealing the aesthetic back; returning it to a less-precious, approachable place. Its like a really cute DIY valentine to city life with all its texture and overlapping advertisements, tags, and tiny comedic moments. I was really glad I came for Art Walk and got to meet the artist; her approachable, bubbly personality totally matches what I expected based on her work. She was even giving out free screen-printed posters to visitors! It’s definitely going on my wall! (pictured below)

Across the plaza in the Bunting Center, Jianna Lieberman and Aviva Paley, two graphic designers made these shirts… which I think are hilarious. Despite their patriotic overtones, however, they were oddly enough printed on t shirts made in Honduras.

Lastly, in that same gallery, I loved this painting by Donna Castello “Reflection/ Love Seat”.

STAY TUNED FOR PART II

Panda Bear – “The Preakness”

Well this one was pretty easy. The Animal Collective member’s song named for the race was released in 2011 as a mixtape with four different pairs of shoes designed by each member of the band (no, really). It seems as Noah Lennox is using the race as metaphor for people jockeying for position in their own endeavors. He implores the listener to ignore this: “Keep it up, keep it up, keep it up/ Till the day you’ve got what you want.”

Animal Collective – “The Purple Bottle”

Speaking of Animal Collective, it was Avey Tare who met a girl who got him: “freaked freaked freaked on Preakness/ I’ve never met a girl that/ Likes to drink with horses/ Knows her Chinese ballet.” Who knew the infield was so sophisticated?

Dan Deacon – “Baltihorse”

This song comes out of the gate as a dizzying swirl of percussion and electronics, slows near the backstretch, and surges forward toward the finish line. It’s as exhilarating as any song in Deacon’s repertoire.

Horse Lords – “Wildcat Strike”

How could we not include Horse Lords? Their name makes it sound like they maintain a private box with tinted windows at Pimlico, where they sit in a chair stroking a cat and counting their winnings. It’s hard to say just what this song is about, as there are no words, but “Wildcat Strike” would be a great name for a racehorse.

Ponytail – “Burning Saddles”

Here’s another example of a band name that sort of lends itself to this. And hey, the song title even works here! We’re not exactly sure who made this video at the zoo, but whatever. City Paper does not keep a jockey on retainer, so we’re not quite sure if the term “burning saddles” has any sort of meaning in that line of work. If it does, it can’t be good.

Rod Lee – “Hey Riders”

The opening refrain of “Hey riders! /Give ‘em some room” is what we imagine the winning jockey yells as he surges for the finish line.

Celebration – “Pony”

This is as sexualized as the local psych rock stalwarts get, with lead singer Katrina Ford pushing her voice to the ecstatic heights of Debbie Harry territory. Here’s a hint: riding a pony is metaphor for sex.

TT the Artist – “Pony”

TT the Artist employed said metaphor on this club track. As an added bonus, there are remixes by Cex, James Nasty, Murder Mark, Kilbourne, Baglady, and Rick Rab. That’s like scoring two trifectas.

Secret Mountains – “High Horse”

Singer Kelly Laughlin may be out of the mix now, and her powerful vocal on this track is a good reminder of why she’ll be missed. Of course, the title is probably a reference to the ol’ idiom “get off your high horse,” but we’ll take it.

Adventure – “Wild Wild Ride”

We also could have gone with “Iron Stallion” off Adventure’s 2008 self-titled album, but this song is aptly titled and would probably make for a great soundtrack while cruising around the track at Pimlico.

Oxes – “Horses Are OK”

One group of animals showing love to another. Isn’t that sweet? We’re not exactly sure why the person who uploaded this to YouTube felt the need to upgrade “OK” to “Good.” Either way, chances are if you’re a fan of horse racing you tend to agree.

Beach House – “Zebra”

Okay, okay. We are well aware there are no zebras being raced at the Preakness. But in the chorus, Victoria Legrand correctly identifies a zebra as an equid, part of the horse family: “Any way you run, you run before us/ Black and white horse arching among us.” And the imagery of beautiful horses galloping is the stuff horse racing buffs will talk about when you bring up euthanasia or ask where the fun is in seeing a little man whip an animal around a dirt oval.

David Eberhardt, 72,  was a member of the Baltimore Four, who poured blood on draft files in Baltimore to protest the Vietnam War in 1967. For that he spent 21 months in federal prison, mainly at Lewisburg, Pa. He is a poet with three books of poetry. He is retired from 33 years of  social work (directing Offender Aid and Restoration) at the Baltimore City Jail. For more information visit davideberhardt.webs.com

Reflections on Hit & Stay

By Dave Eberhardt

The documentary movie, Hit & Stay, directed by Joe Tropea and Skizz Cyzyk,  played at the Maryland Film Festival last week.

Six years in the making, the 100-minute documentary is about anti-draft board actions–spanning 1967 to 1973– to protest the Vietnam War. The film begins with the Baltimore Four (of which I was part) and progresses through the Catonsville Nine, Milwaukee 14, Chicago Eight actions and many other actions (there were approximately 120 in all).

The movie describes how these actions were organized and progressed  from the first–where four of us poured blood on draft files in 1967 in Baltimore and waited to be arrested (hence “hit and  stay”)– to what is perhaps best known action, the Catonsville Nine, where, 45 years ago today, nine individuals burned draft files with homemade napalm. Despite the title, the film also addresses actions where persons would not wait to be arrested (“stay”) but would instead disappear (“run”).

Participants appear in the film speaking frankly and often humorously about their roles in the plots and schemes to break into and pile up and destroy a myriad of draft files. The actions are always creative but, in some instances are ruined by informants or the FBI. Humor abounds, for example, as she “cases” a draft board building, Ms. Dougherty spends the night watching the progression of lights on and off in the wrong building. Tom Melville gets great laughter as he describes seminary and the priesthood as perfect training grounds for prison. Weatherperson Bill Ayers says he finds religion a “bummer,” but praises the many clergy involved in the draft actions. Jim Forest muses over the drill sergeant side of Phil Berrigan’s personality.

As the actions progressed, they became more and more secular and youthful. Jerry Elmer states that Phil Berrigan was suspicious of him at first because of his age.

Though it consists largely of talking heads and interviews, the film creates a gripping narrative arc, thanks to Tropea and Cyzyk. The participants seem to provide glue to hold the the narrative together and interspersed is commentary by such luminaries as historian Howard Zinn and scholar Noam Chomsky.

The “other side” of the picture, that is those opposed to these actions, is well represented by a prosecutor, a judge, retired FBI agents, draft clerks, and church goers.

As Daniel Berrigan leaves a church having given the morning sermon after he decided to go “underground” instead of reporting to jail, a member of the congregation comments, “Oh that’s what it’s about? He’s supposed to be in jail with his bother?” And another says, “Well, he’s entitled to his beliefs but I don’t share them.” Another says, “I think destroying draft cards is un-American”.

Given the youth of the directors, I fully expected an amateurish work and was pleasantly surprised by the over all professionalism–thus leading to hopes of some wide distribution or play on PBS or another more established venues (the hard part).

All of us participants learned a great deal about the other actions previously known only in fragmentary fashion. To have big appreciative audiences as well as friends present to watch the movie was very moving.

Sadly, a number of crucial actors, such as Tom Lewis, John Grady, Phil Berrigan, and others have passed on. Dan Berrigan’s 92 birthday fell on May 11, the date of the second showing of Hit and Stay.

To me, Jim Harney of the Milwaukee 14 and the “weather person” Laura Whitehorn give the most moving summaries and analyses of what we were trying to accomplish, what we meant and “were about,” and what needs to be done. Because of such statements as theirs, the message is a plain and clear one, making the movie as relevant now as it will be in the future of war-making America.

For the most part, the trails of these groups were railroad jobs–as they continue to be today in the case of the Plowshares group. Plowshares actions took off as the draft-board actions stopped, specifically targeting nuclear war. The same week  Hit and Stay premiered, three members of the Transform Now Plowshares group were found guilty of sabotage for  “interfering with or obstructing the national defense” and “depredation of government property” (we of the Baltimore Four  got the same charge in 1967) at the Oak Ridge nuclear facility, where they had poured the actual blood of  Baltimore Four and Plowshares member Tom Lewis, which had been preserved since his death, on the walls of a building containing enough enriched uranium to end life on the planet. They had hiked a mile to get there, going through four fences, the last three in “Kill Zones” where they could well have  been shot.  The three Tranform Now Plowshares activists, one 82 year old nun, Megan Rice, were treated as terrorists.

At the “Transform Now” courtroom in Knoxville, the jury and judge were as leaden and dead as their counterparts were in the trials portrayed in Hit & Stay; but hopefully this movie will reach out to “middle America”  and not  just those of us who are a minority of exiles in our own country.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Directed by Mira Nair

Opens at the Charles Theatre May 17

We know what the American Dream is, but what is the Pakistani Dream? This is the question Changez, the protagonist of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, asks himself as we see him transition from an up-and-coming Wall Street business analyst to what may be considered a radical when he returns to his native Pakistan.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist revolves around a conversation between American journalist Bobby Lincoln (Liev Schreiber) and Changez (Riz Ahmed), a Pakistani national working as a professor in a local university who is suspected of being part of a radical academic movement. The two discuss Changez’s journey from westernized businessman to principled traditionalist.

A series of flashbacks takes us through Changez’s early days in the United States as a new Princeton graduate who lands his first job at a prestigious New York City firm. His talents are immediately recognized by Jim Cross (Kiefer Sutherland), a powerful executive who specializes in helping businesses maximize profit, most commonly through finding redundancies and corporate downsizing. Under the tutelage of Cross, Changez is on the fast track to becoming the youngest partner in the history of the firm. He dates a beautiful woman (Kate Hudson). The American Dream seems well within his grasp.

Before it’s fully realized, however, the events of Sept. 11 change everything. The attacks serve as a catalyst in both Changez and his environment. The respected young analyst becomes a target for racial profiling and unwarranted suspicions as fear and jingoism set in. Changez reaches a boiling point when charged with eliminating the job of a culturally important Turkish publisher. Faced with the moral quandary that develops, he refuses to eliminate the man’s position, instead quitting the firm to return to Pakistan.

At this point, director Mira Nair makes something of a misstep. Changez’s return to Pakistan is abrupt, and the flashbacks jump immediately to his work in academia. We understand his motivations for returning to Pakistan and changing his career but are not given enough information to discern whether his experiences have caused him to shift his ideology completely or become radicalized. This is, of course, part of the intended mystery and suspense of the film, but it lacks finesse on the part of the filmmaker. The purposeful ambiguity of the film’s final act muddies what is an otherwise interesting examination of the cultural rift men like Changez have experienced in post-9/11 America.

This adaptation of Mohsin Hamid’s international bestseller is an engaging and thought-provoking film, and Nair exercises a particularly deft hand when tackling complex cultural issues, even if not quite as successfully as her prior work in Monsoon Wedding or Salaam Bombay! The breakthrough performance of Riz Ahmed and strong supporting roles from Schreiber and Sutherland keep the viewer engrossed in the subtleties of Changez’s shift from someone who loves America, to someone who fears it.

The certificate says that the organization is permitted to “use potion [sic] of premise ground floor will be used as an office for Station North Entertainment, Inc, a ninprofit [sic] organization with a 2 person staff and a visual arts gallery.”

Despite the humorous typos, we’re delighted that Station North and Annex will finally be able to move into the building at the corner of North Avenue and Charles St. Ben Stone, the director of Station North, said in January, as we walked through the then-under-construction space, that he hoped it could become a “welcome center” for the district.

Ratscape, which leans more toward the punk and metal side of things, is scheduled for July 19-21 and will once again be staged at Hour Haus. Bands confirmed so far include: Arbouretum, Slow Jerks, Lazlo Lee & The Motherless Children, Advlts, Raindeer, Hot God , Baklavaa, Rukut, and Ravagers. Organizers confirmed there would eventually be 40 bands over the festival’s three days.

Scapescape, a festival more akin to Whartscape (R.I.P.), is set for Aug. 30-Sept. 1 and will have three venues again this year, the parking lot next to The Metro Gallery, The Windup Space, and… the plaza near Man/Woman statue, which will be used for light projections at night. No bands are confirmed just yet.

We’ll keep you updated on lineup confirmations as we receive them.

Even since before Baltimore rapper StarrZ signed with Universal, he’d been hyping up Live Forever, Die Dope, his upcoming follow-up to last year’s Best Mixtape Ever, and its lead single, “Dope Trilla.” This month, the anthemic Feddy 2 Times-produced track was finally unveiled, in the form of an awesome video that only serves to highlight how massive the song sounds.

The Dope Trilla video, directed by Abeni Nazeer, depicts Baltimore with the kind of cinematic grit that is rarely done so well in local rap videos, with StarrZ rapping while chowing down on a chicken box or toting around a skateboard. And just when the song couldn’t get any crazier, the last minute is given over to an extended sample of the neighborhood shoutouts from the ‘90s Baltimore club classic “Handclap” by DJ Snoopy and Lil Mama (not the New York rapper that later came along performing under that name).

On the other hand, I argued that Gaia’s attempt to engage the community made Cunningham’s show appear hermetic, insular, and safe. Without revealing the details of our exchange, it is fair to say that Cunningham thought my treatment was harsh or unfair. I asked her to write a letter to the paper explaining the intentions behind the show–because, if the show was not, at least in part, an attack on Gaia, I could not understand why an artist as good as Cunningham would devote so much work, and her first solo show, to a take-down of Gauguin. (It is really hard to overstate how much I liked her previous work).

Cunningham didn’t write a letter explaining her intentions, but the art website Daily Serving did release a fascinating interview with her today, in which she comes across as articulate as she is talented. It is definitely worth reading. Among other things she says:

“One thing I was very conscious of doing was giving a specific voice to the internal authority figure that is generally present as a form of anxiety within my practice. The authoritarian voice in my head is an amalgam of various domineering and dismissive voices. I tried to imagine specifically that the voice of judgment was Gauguin himself, knowing him to be emotionally abusive and excited by humiliation, of women and of Van Gogh and others who loved him. Under the fantasy of his tutelage, the only response that I believed I could use to affirm my agency was to fall far short of his impenetrable genius as a painter, sculptor, and image producer. Consciously taking a submissive role in the production of my objects, I’d sort of hoped to incite some judgment of my effectiveness as an image-maker, forcing a critical voice maybe similar to what Gauguin or perhaps Georg Baselitz might use to degrade my work.”

I did mention the intentionally ineffective image of a ship, but my criticism was directed more towards what felt like the kind of over-intellectualization that graduate school can engender. And the  interview is so full of philosophical musings, referring to Rousseau, Deleuze (or at least his concept of the rhizome), and Lefebvre–but while such intellectualism doesn’t always make for great image-making, it does make for a fascinating conversation. And it definitely makes me want to see the show again.

Cunningham’s show, which is now, “informally titled” Tan Penis Island is up through May 25 at sophiajacob. Cunningham is also one of the six Sondheim finalists, so her work will be displayed in the Walters Museum this summer.

May 15
Thirty: 30 Creative Minds Under 30
6 P.M., Maryland Art Place, 8 Market Place, suite 100, (410) 962-8565, mdartplace.org, free.
Continuing its series highlighting the processes of young artists, Maryland Art Place hosts Charlotte Keniston, Rebecca Chan, and Ginerva Shay in a panel discussion.

May 16
David Lynch Inspired Art Show
7-9 P.M., The Windup Space, 12 W. North Ave., (410) 244-8855, thewindupspace.com, free.
Before Saturday’s David Lynchfest featuring bands and burlesque, swing by the Windup for an art show of artwork inspired by the quirky mind behind Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks.

May 17
Closing Reception: Blaster’s Baltimore Years
7-11 P.M., Current Space, 421 N. Howard St., (410) 343-9295, currentspace.com, free.
Enjoy a video performance of Corn and Smoke featuring Karl Ekdahl, Sarah Fask, Sarah Magida, Liz King, Laure Drogul, John Eaton, Patrick Riffe and others, new work by Dan Breen and John Eaton, and the work of a true original, Blaster Al Ackerman.

May 18
Red Emma’s Closing Party
6 P.M., Red Emma’s, 800 Saint Paul St., (410) 230-0450, redemmas.org.
Your favorite anarchist bookstore and mine is leaving its old location for a comfy new spot in the North Avenue Market. Celebrate with music, cheap books, and libations.

May 19
Art Outside
11 A.M.-4:30 P.M., Druid Hill Park, artoutsidemd.org, free.
Hey, come on out and enjoy ceramics, painting, drawing, sculpture, mixed-media, jewelry, and much more en plein air.

May 20
Dinner & Bikes
7 P.M., The Chicken Box, 1 W. North Ave., dinnerandbikesbaltimore.eventbrite.com, $5-$10.
Cyclists and cycle advocates can talk about how lame Baltimore’s infrastructure is over a vegan and gluten-free buffet cooked by Joshua Ploeg, hear Elly Blue give a presentation on transportation equity, and see an excerpt from Aftermass, a documentary on cycling activism in Portland. Bon apetit. (Disclosure: I live with Bikemore founder Chris Merriam)

May 21
Random Access Memories: Daft Punk record drop listening party with Mugzy and DJ Just K
9 P.M., The Metro Gallery, 1700 N. Charles St., (410) 244-0899, themetrogallery.net, free.
If you haven’t stolen the new Daft Punk album off the internet or streamed it legally via iTunes, now is your chance to stay up all night to get a first listen.

May 22
Spring Beer Cocktail Party
6-9 P.M., Heavy Seas Alehouse, 1300 Bank St., (410) 522-0850, heavyseasalehouse.com, $35.
Beer cocktails are just as they sound: beer with other kinds of booze in it. We like beer and we like booze, so we’re interested to see what Heavy Seas has whipped up.

Although the performances at Sweetlife were undoubtedly a huge hit, and the sporadic heavy rain and subsequent mud did little to put a damper on people’s willingness to raise their hands in their air as if they just didn’t care, I somehow doubt there was anything anyone could do to make a crowd of college kids dropping between $75 and $150 a ticket in Columbia, MD any better off.

Sweetlife’s organizers deserve praise for how accurately the festival’s performers general concern with doing pop the ‘right way’ reflected Sweetgreen’s own attempts to correct the traditional model of the fast food restaurant– and of the music festival for that matter. Sweetlife purchased carbon offsets, provided compost bins, and even put solar panels on the top of the main stage at Merriweather (although, in fairness, I couldn’t see the top of the pavilion to check for panels).

After parking, walking for twenty minutes in precisely the wrong direction, walking back to the appropriate entrance, cursing Merriweather’s signage/lack thereof, realizing this entrance wasn’t the right entrance either, we finally managed to miss the entirety of Lindsey Stirling’s set.  We were informed she wailed on the violin, but it was too late and all of my Charlie Daniels jokes went into the dustbin of history.

Solange (seen here during her set) followed with a set that relied heavily on her magnificent 2012 EP True.  Early on, the sound was plagued with bursts of feedback and mic issues for backing vocalists, which disturbed Solange’s smooth synth-laden R&B, but she was able persevere and by the time she got around to sleeper ‘hit’ “Losing You,” the crowd was more than ready to respond to her request that we go “apeshit.”

Solange’s choice to insert both Selena and Dirty Projectors covers to round out her set seemed to reveal the space she is trying to stake out for herself since leaving Geffen/Interscope in 2009.  She is still invested in pop music, but she seems to be embracing her independence as a chance to explore a more idiosyncratic take on R&B.  Like her recent tweets about sexism in pop which revolve around the idea of what is her’s in her music, these disparate covers inform Solange’s audience of who she is.

Taking some sort of precognitive inspiration from the day’s cardio-enthusiasts Passion Pit, we took a walk around the grounds.  From the lawn, Gary Clark Jr.’s Hendrix and Cream-esque guitar heroics sounded both competent and pleasing, but getting a National Bohemian beer for $5 was far more rewarding.  Looking on from the line for the men’s restroom, Columbus, Ohio’s twenty | one | pilots earned an enthusiastic reception on the festival’s second stage — however, their indietronica/raprock is decidedly not my thing.

Returning to the mainstage in time for Yeah Yeah Yeahs, I was struck by how the band must be the best live group from the early 2000s garage revival.  “Maps” demanded an earnest singalong and the crowd happily complied, “Zero” inspired some of the most vigorous dancing of the day, and even their latest album’s title track, “Mosquito,” received a warm reception.  Karen O remains a great tormentor in pop performance, brighter than anything else on the stage in her bile yellow sequins and knee high socks, she still utilizes sweetness and anger in unpredictable ways to captivate the audience. The tension between pop sweetness and malevolence all came to a head [hurr hurr] with “Heads Will Roll,” a truly excellent Yeah Yeah Yeahs concoction either about the Reign of Terror or doing a lot of E. Regardless, the garish sequins, the delicate imbalance between noise and melody, and the shifting moods throughout the band’s entire performance made for something that tried to embrace both the expectations of the festival and the band’s more incendiary early performances. However, I couldn’t tell if Karen O spat on anyone.

Retiring again to the line outside the men’s restroom, I was struck with how excited college bros in American flag basketball shorts were for Kendrick Lamar. Onstage Kendrick Lamar seemed primed to deliver. He paced back and forth across the stage sluicing  lyrics with aplomb. The laptop DJ accompaniment left little in the way of visual spectacle and although Lamar’s focused delivery left much of the audience captivated it did nothing to stave off our hunger, so we left to get some food.  His performance went well with falafel.

With the rain falling hard and our footwear caked in mud, we returned to the pavilion for Passion Pit.  They started with what seemed to be an attempt at approximating the beginning of U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name.” It then turned into the sort of indie pop that causes a friend to inquire, “How is this band not fun.?” The Taco Bell inspired jazzercise of “Take A Walk” created such a furor in the crowd that it has certainly solidified its position as the lead off track for the future comp “Jock Jams for People Bad At Sports” coming out on Arts & Crafts in 2025.  It must be said that frontman Michael Angelakos’ work ethic on stage was impressive, and his effort to satisfy a crowd who seemed to adore his work was genuinely admirable.  It was almost as if through his effort, Angelakos’ hoped to justify the sins of his pop instincts and maximalist compositions.

Despite a return of the microphone problems that plagued the beginning of Solange’s set, Phoenix were by far the most impressive act of the festival. In an hour and a half they managed to seamlessly work in Daft Punk-styled instrumentals, lullabies, funk, disco, punk, pop, rock, and probably some classical quotations or whatever French thing I probably missed. Their set was appropriately heavy on their latest album Bankrupt! and 2009’s breakthrough Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, with that album’s “1901” in contention for the most arduous reception of the evening.  Although Phoenix eschews the usual rockist reliance on narrative lyricism and “songwriting,” their imagery is often evocative of  a discomfort with the trappings of rock stardom and capitalist excess that you might find in more traditional rock-oriented groups. While Phoenix’s sonic avoidance of rock cliche didn’t prevent singer Thomas Mars from both crowd surfing and smashing his faulty microphone, it did mean that before Phoenix came on, the banner exhorting Sweetlife came down, and that their set featured the hilariously incongruous graphic of raining dollar bills, not to mention the implication of calling an album Bankrupt! in this economy.

The conflict implicit in Phoenix’s use of tension and release, and their current ambivalent pop stardom after nearly 15 years of producing music, leave Phoenix as the most compelling, and perhaps most flattering iteration of what Sweetlife is supposed to be about in the first place.  Is it possible to make a music festival so self-aware and self-correcting that it is not a burden?  Can artists check the forms they choose to work in enough to have it all the ways they desire, or are forms and systems things we’ve locked meaning into? In retrospect does it seem like Phoenix have spent 15 years perfecting a specific idea, or circling around what has become a popular “solution” for their conflicting impulses?  If we reject popular success as the value in a consumerist and industrial culture, where are we to find meaning in consumerist art after it is Green? Did I sit, stuck in a parking lot for 45 minutes after the festival with cars running all around me? Yes.

Pay attention, cultivate your negative capability, and subtle horror begins to dawn. The man (Thiago Martins) is a thief running the sweetest con ever—total mind control. The woman, Kris (Amy Seimetz), wakes up on the side of the road with no idea how her life was ruined. As she starts to put the pieces back together, she meets Jeff (Carruth), and suddenly Upstream Color is a love story. They are both damaged—he hints at a drug problem—but their woundedness seems to bring them closer together. And then she starts retelling his childhood memories as her own without realizing she’s doing it.

There is more, so much more. Thoreau’s Walden plays a key role. And then there’s an older man (Andrew Sensenig) who divides his time between manipulating field recordings into unearthly sounds and tending a herd of pigs implanted with the wriggling parasites he pulls out of hapless strangers. How the wide-swinging orbit of this character (dubbed “The Sampler” in the credits) intersects with the others’ is one of the areas where the complex tissue of connections holding Upstream Color together stretches thinnest.

After Primer, Carruth could have written his own ticket with a studio. Instead he spent private money to make a movie he wanted to make, his way—in addition to writing, directing, producing, shooting, editing, starring, and writing and performing the score, he’s distributing Upstream Color as well. And the result is polished, smart, and entertaining specifically because, unlike most movies, it pushes you to make connections yourself: some assembly required.

In a few of the handful of interviews Carruth has given about the film, he has stated that for him, it’s about identity and the loss of identity and how one copes with that. What the film gets at most for this viewer is connectivity, and the relations between man, woman, pig, worm, water, and earth—the awesome and terrible interrelation of the life cycle and the daily incorporation and casting out of the very atoms we all share in common. Whatever you get out of it, if you make it through once, you’re probably going to want to watch it again.

Through Friday, May 17, at the Charles Theatre. Also available on DVD.

The film centers on the divorce of a musical couple played by Ned Oldham and Kim Taylor (in a sort of reverse Kim Gordson/ Thurston Moore split). Porterfield and co-writer Amy Belk penned the characters with the actors–both  musicians in real life– in mind, so it was fitting that Porterfield took advantage of the premiere to give them a chance to perform. As Oldham and Taylor shared the stage to sing “Love Hurts,” in a tone reminiscent of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, it gave the audience a chance to see them interact musically–in a way the almost telegraphically constructed film didn’t (Taylor’s character, in fact, seems disgusted with Oldham’s because he doesn’t write songs anymore).

For Oldham, the premiere was something of a homecoming. He used to live in Baltimore where he regularly performed with his former band  Anomoanon  in the early aughts. Anomoanon came together at the after-party for the first time since 2008.

In the film, there is also clip of a hirsute Oldham and Old Calf  that is supposed to be from the ’90s, but was actually recorded in 2007, which you can watch here. The film seems to be as in love with music as it is with Baltimore and the performances after the premiere were a perfect way for Porterfield to share that love.

At a QnA session following the second screening of his film Drinking Buddies at the Maryland Film Festival Friday, director Joe Swanberg likened his status as an independent filmmaker to that of a small-time brewer. It was an apt comparison, given that his comedy/drama hybrid is set largely in a brewery

If Swanberg was indeed a brewer, Drinking Buddies might be a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale: accessible enough to be consumed by those who eschew indie movies. Familiar faces like Office Space‘s Ron Livingston, House‘s Olivia Wilde, and SNL‘s Jason Sudeikis (whose role is one of the least comedic in the film) will draw in mainstream moviegoers, but cinematatographer Ben Richardson (Beasts of the Southern Wild) will appeal to Charles Theatre regulars. And the Magnolia Pictures-distributed movie—anticipated on VOD July 25 and in theaters Aug. 23 (a Baltimore run is still pending)—explores relatable dynamics at home and in the workplace with an artfulness that will win over both crowds.

Two boyfriend-girlfriend couples form the nucleus of the film: Kate (Wilde) and Chris (Livingston), and Luke (Jake Johnson) and Jill (Anna Kendrick). Perpetually hungover Kate and goofy, boisterous Luke work at the same craft brewery in Chicago, Kate schedules tastings and manages promotions, Luke brews. The two co-workers have a very affectionate relationship; they look forward to eating lunch together. Jill teaches and Chris produces music, but that’s not really important. Kate and Jill interact just fine—no tension or jealousy is expressed—and the couples enjoy each other’s company enough to go on a weekend trip to Michigan together. While there, the inter-couple interplay grows somewhat dicey. But it’s not there that the film’s core unfolds, thankfully, and the remaining tension and resolution (or lack thereof) that awaits plays out in a realistic fashion.

As refreshing and enjoyable as it is, one hopes that Drinking Buddies holds up as well as Sierra Nevada, and not Pete’s Wicked Ale.

Buvoli is a renowned and wide-ranging artist, whose sometimes whimsical animations, videos, sculptures, and paintings often deal with superheroes, flight, myth, and futurism–except that Buvoli’s hero is “Not-a-Superhero.”

“He is an internationally-acclaimed multimedia artist whose highly inventive and playful artistic practice models in the most poetic and spacious of ways represent the very values for which the program has stood for so many years,” Ray Allen, MICA’s vice president for academic affairs and provost, said in a statement.

Buvoli is also an accomplished art educator who has been teaching in various universities for more than a decade. He is not entirely new to Baltimore, having exhibited at Maryland Art Place in the show in New Wallworks in 2011.

Image: Around, Around, and Away: Not-a-Superhero and the Myth of New York (Part I),

City Paper: Rhyming has changed a lot since you started, and some of those changes were brought about by your own innovations — do you make any attempt to update your flows or your vocabulary to contemporary tastes when you write now, or do you still have the same basic approach you had in 1987?

Rakim: My concepts have evolved and because of that the rhymes flow where they need to, but I haven’t made a conscious decision to change my style.  From my first days on the mic, people have always tried to say “do it like this” or “this is what’s hot now” but I think if you’re always chasing after what’s the new best thing, you’re not being true to yourself as an artist so I stick with what I do.  I’m a hiphop fan, so I listen to everything and I’m a curious person, so I’m constantly seeking knowledge and there’s no doubt the genres direction, multiple directions, influence me and expand my thinking, but I don’t change the foundation.

CP: You’ve said your flows have been inspired by the melodies of your favorite jazz musicians — can you given an example of where one line might have those kinds of origins?

Rakim: I think it’s not one line, but the entire style that I try to emulate… it’s Coltrane when he breaks out into a solo… playing two notes at one time…and I play sax so I know that ain’t even possible but he does it.  So Ill try to take what’s impossible and flip it.  That might mean expanding 16 bars to 20 or crushing internal rhymes in where they’re not supposed to fit.  Just drawing inspiration from what my icons were doing with their art.

Rakim: It might sound a little funny coming from a dude who remixed James Brown and George Clinton to make his own music, but to be honest, I prefer when people stay original with they own projects and leave mine to me.  But I understand that its an homage or a show of respect.  50 once said his favorite rapper said check out “My Melody.”  Jay incorporated “Follow the Leader” and some other stuff.  Robin Thicke’s “Mr. Sexy” had my nieces dancing.  It’s a blessing to be where I am and to get that kind of love.

CP: Do you think that the mythic status you achieved with your early work has made it difficult to make an impact with new music?

Rakim: I try to live up to my own expectations and those are pretty high.  If I concentrate on elevating my lyrical content, that might in turn elevate all lyrical content or at least get cats thinking about it.  I’ve always been an underground rapper so my influence is more on the foundation of the culture.  If what I do can get a young artist to stop and think about what he’s rhyming, that’s bigger than a radio hit or a platinum plaque.  That’s impact with greater meaning.

Rakim: You can’t take anything from Eric when it comes to what we did.  There was a lot more to the music…and to the business…than what happened in one studio session or another. When we was coming up, Eric put a lot of people in the right place at the right time and there was an energy he brought that helped shaped the outcome. He doesn’t need defending.

Rakim: That’s always a tough one to answer cause I’m a fan first, nahmeen.  There’s a lot out there to love.  You got people like Fab and Jay repping NY hard from the podium.  People like Kanye, HitBoy, Pharrell, Ryan Leslie pushing production to new heights.  Artists like Brother Ali and Bishop Lamont keeping things close to the truth.  There’s a lot of good out there that elevates above the clutter.

Rakim: I’ve always believed that following trends, chasing after what’s hot instead of what’s inside you…that’s the biggest enemy of creativity, the biggest challenge to HipHop.  There’s artists that do what they do and sell millions of albums but that doesn’t mean everyone should try to do what they do.  When an artist stays original, stays true to their own vision, that stands out to me more than superstar status.

Rakim: I’ve done a few shows in B’More.  About a half dozen years ago there was one where it was snowing out…like blizzard snowing with a foot or more on the ground…Now ya see, I don’t fly so it’s me driving into town and we are crawling.  I don’t have time to go to the hotel or nothing, just get to the stage.  And I get up there and, blizzard conditions outside, me late and still, that crowd is packed in the room and the energy is through the roof. That’s that B’More love. Don’t worry, I’ll be on time next week – no snow forecasted.

Rakim: There’s two sides to the sword, nahmeen.  When I was coming up HipHop was a neighborhood thing and it was somewhat confined in both the expectations of what you were supposed to be rhyming and the access to resources to create quality music….and that’s coming from the first rapper to sign a million dollar record deal and help change the content of our rhymes.  Now, the genre is a global phenomenon and artists have access to the best production and instrumentation in the business.  I have some nostalgia for the street corner and park party days, but its a blessing to see this thing on an international level…and to have come along with it.

“She’s not on to me! It’s crazy!”

Comedian, pundit, author and outspoken feminist Lizz Winstead is musing on her apparent relationship with wild-eyed Republican Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann, with whom she has posted “selfies” on social media with alarming regularity. They share a home state (Minnesota), but they also share opposite sides of the political absurdity spectrum populating the evening news shows of late. “I’ve made lots of money making fun of her, and have been in the paper constantly, and I’m on TV making fun of her, and she doesn’t have a clue.”

A trailblazer in the relatively new world of political satire – Winstead is co-creator of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show and co-founder of the now-defunct Air America radio network – Winstead documented her history in an essay collection, Lizz Free or Die, last year in hardback. Now that the obligatory paperback version is hitting the shelves (with added material), Winstead, it seems, has even more to say. And, no, she won’t shut up.

It must have been hard to totally rewrite your book in paperback after having the luxury of trade cloth to leverage against the first time.
Lizz Winstead: Yes, you’re so right. Ding, ding, ding! OMG. You’re so honest. [Laughs] That is what one struggles with when one puts a paperback out. Have you ever tried to sign a check when it’s not on the table?

Seriously, was it easier for you to set out to write a “book of essays” rather than a memoir? Because honestly, Lizz, it’s a memoir.
It’s honestly sort of a memoir. But it’s only sort of a memoir, because I didn’t choose to focus in depth on one particular aspect of my life. … I decided to take a couple of different stories from certain parts of my life that had a specific purpose, for the most part, that just kind of showed something that got me going, propelled me, opened my eyes in some way, to get me there, to show me who the fuck I was and what I was doing.

Even when it’s not profoundly that, it’s more sort of cautionary tales of what happens when you take something on that you truly love, but you then have to learn how to do it, having already accepted the challenge. Which is kind of the way I seem to be living my life.

You also live your life as an outspoken woman. Where do you stand on Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, versus Anne-Marie Slaughter’s much-debated “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” – the new, nuanced feminism of the elite?
Feminism of the elite has always been the feminism that’s talked about the most. I haven’t read Sheryl Sandberg’s book, so I don’t want to totally comment on it, but I think that privilege with power and feminism with power is very different from feminism when you don’t have the power that she has. And I think when you are struggling, and feeling desperate for survival, tips like “Ask for what you really deserve!” aren’t really sometimes the tips that you need.

You’ve been a woman in an industry that is dominated by men. There are some bits in your book where there is some loosely gender-based friction, but you’ve also formed some strong alliances and created careers for people like Jon Stewart. Have you ever felt a glass ceiling shatter, or do you feel like it’s a more vague progression than that for you?
At the beginning, there was this very weird notion, shockingly, that all women were sort of the same, and so all women comedians were the same. They would never just have two women on the show because two women have a great tone that would mesh together in a show, [because] if it was more than a one-woman show, it would be a freak show. It [would be] the “All Woman Show” or, I did an HBO show called Women of the Night. … They figure we just talk about our periods and stuff. Which, by the way, if we do talk about our periods, so what! Men can talk about getting laid all day long, but if women talk about things that women are about, somehow it was devalued because it was uninteresting to men.

I don’t get the sense in reading the book that in any of your major projects – The Daily Show, Air America Radio – that there was any real gender conflict, and you actually do try to remain positive about all of the experiences. You come off more as someone who always said what she thought and then owned it, consequences be damned.
I think what I did was – it slows up the process – but I just avoided places and people that I saw were sexist or placed women in certain positions, and sometimes those people owned chains of comedy clubs, and sometimes that meant, “Don’t go work there.” Then I ended up being offered jobs and being in charge of things that didn’t have anything to do with my gender – that had to do with me deciding to plow ahead in places that were more nurturing, rather than having to battle who I was.

You got to document some of the reaction to the hardcover release of the book as you were editing the paperback edition, including the response to the chapter about your own abortion. Some of that came from the left, which wanted you to tone it down.
You can’t run away from abortion. And if you are, you have to ask why you are. Because when you do, you demonize the majority of women who have had one and you make them feel shame. And even if you think you don’t, you do. I just feel so strongly that if you believe that it is indeed a medical procedure, why are you letting the morality police define it as something else? You are slut-shaming by proxy. It’s not a message that some people want to hear, but I feel like it’s important.

The outpouring that I got of people saying “I agree” was very heartening, because I feel like if you want women to come out of the shadows and talk about their experience and be the base of reproductive justice and abortion rights – if one in three women have had an abortion at some time in their lives, that isn’t always the rape, incest or life of the mother. Keep it a hot button until all the rights go away, and then it’s not even a button, and then it’s not even an issue, and women are just having unsafe abortions everywhere. Good plan!

(Photo: Billy Manes)

Porterfield’s two previous films, Hamilton and Putty Hill, were recently acquired by New York’s Museum of Modern Art. This month, he contributed a top ten list to Artforum magazine, where he showed hometown pride, writing about Co La’s new album and the Ravens’ Super Bowl victory.

I came to Rooms Fall Apart: A Serious Play, a descendent of the Copy Cat Theatre’s Rooms Plays, now put on by Socially Engaged Arts and Performance Projects (SEAPP) as part of the Transmodern festival (though it runs through this weekend), with a bunch of reasons for not liking this non-play, non-performance art piece, and most of them still hold true. I mean, it’s hard to discern a serious idea, and there’s no serious sense that anything serious is happening. And it calls itself a “serious play.” Is this really serious? Is it serious with quotation marks?

But then I realized that starting from either assumption would get me in deep water, so I just headed upstairs.* At the top of four floors, we were crammed into a small room where everyone had to sit on everyone else’s laps. There was a ghoul taking notes, and obviously trying to figure out what to do with everyone once they arrive in.

I looked around. I didn’t know anyone there, not even a competing theater critic. Doing this with nothing but strangers – and for the first time – made this more affecting.

I was picked with two other strangers by a transsexual stripper, and I was slowly urged to crawl through what seemed like a labyrinthine large intestine. Now the people in front of me – a female socialist and a queer socialist (at least this is how they identified themselves in another room) turned a corner and disappeared. I panicked, crawled down another length of large intestines, and found what looked like an exit, which I then realized was a window of said fourth floor. That exit was not an option. Then I found myself back where I had started, but realized that another group of four people was starting their own journey. I was in danger of blocking the large intestine. I was supposed to be heading through this with a critical eye, remember.

Luckily, I persevered, and somewhere ahead of me, found what looked like the shoes of the person I had started with. I didn’t grab them, but found myself released in what looked like a gigantic igloo/cave, with a light slowly let down, and strange voices on either side baiting me and encouraging me to turn the light on. I did, and two faces poked out of the pink wall, scribbled with bathroom graffiti.

I was of two minds. On the one hand, I approached this with skeptical nonchalance (you want serious criticism? I’ll give you criticism), but on the other hand, I didn’t want to muck things up, having already gotten lost in a large intestine. I saw myself as a participant in a rudely staged experience…and even as I went through 22 rooms, losing a sense of direction and even reason for being there, there was no question that, in the end, I was not only a point of interest, but the only thing that held this experience together.

In fact, as the emcee helpfully put it, I was the single dot at the center of the universe, through which subjectivity and objectivity – and the awareness of space – flow. I was being asked to navel gaze, even as I was being prodded, baited, encouraged, offended, humored, and entertained.  The somewhat detached observation point – amused, but never involved enough to really care – served as a nexus for this creative smorgasbord.

This strange comfort zone, once achieved, was an excellent starting point for the rest of the Transmodern festival. This was about process. The intestinal tract was the focus and not what we came out with at the end.

This was a serious experience. That’s all I can say. Again, “serious experience” seems like a phrase that means little by the time you forget what being serious feels like. So the only three pieces of advice I would give if you go this weekend are: Don’t do it if you’re a devout Catholic, over 300 pounds, or on a bad acid trip. But, to be honest, I can’t wait for the next Rooms Play.

*This post initially stated that the production was not handicap accessible. We regret the error.

On the other hand, Dariusz Skoraczewski (in the bottom photo) is the principle cellist for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. Sources tell City Paper that a position in the symphony that is equivalent of Skoraczewski’s earns upwards of $60,000 a year.

This raises the question: should the Baker awards work like the MacArthur Genius Grants, which clearly go to people who have already achieved great success and remuneration for their artistic work, or should they go to help those, like Parks, who have displayed a high level of talent and accomplishment, but with very little institutional support?

This year’s jury seems clearly divided on the question, and to be fair, they don’t really have to make a choice. The third winner, Jonathan Latiano, a large-scale sculptor and installation artist (the top photo is his work) with an MFA from MICA is somewhere between the two.

But let me make the case that the prize should not go to people like Skoraczewski, who are able to practice their art without the financial support of the Baker. First, there’s the matter of need. The city is full of talented artists and musicians who could desperately use the money in order to survive and create. If the award goes to someone like that, it not only rewards past work, but makes future work possible. Future work that may not have otherwise existed. Certainly, the award will help someone as talented as Skoraczewski create something impressive, but he has access to numerous other sources of support–so the payoff, for the Baker, is not as great. While Parks and Latiano express their gratitude in statements on the site (Latiano is especially graceful in his acknowledgment of the other artists in town),  Skoraczewski didn’t comment at all on the prize.

My purpose here is not to single out Skoraczewski. If there were a similar writing prize in town, I would equally argue that someone like me, who earns a salary for writing, is not as worthy a recipient as someone who receives no such support (for full disclosure: I did recently apply for a national Creative Capital grant for a book project and I have collaborated with Ruby Fulton who won one of the b grants). Baltimore-based grants like the Baker awards, in my opinion, should try to maximize their impact on the artistic community. As it is, we have no idea what the jury’s criteria is, since “The Mary Sawyers Baker selection process will be conducted by a private jury of national and international multidisciplinary experts who will consider all website nominations in selecting the Mary Sawyers Baker winners. Their process will remain private.”